This is a sim. I don't spend a lot of time on the farm sim boards but racing in mudrunner is about as suitable as asking for vehicular combat in farm17.

I'm not denying, in OldTires while trucks were limited to 30 km/h, it has fun makeshift rally races. It was not about "how fast you driving trucks", but "how good are you at keeping up speed/momentum" or "how long you will stay on those 200 L". And when loaded "blue crap" B130 is outrunning your empty 4320 or 255 this was treated as offensive as flipping bird at you.

In MR that not the case, because of revamped muds and dirts and also revamped truck's performance. But still - getting anywhere on pre-ridge 968m was an achievement on it's own. I've got once this chat:

— (me, upon meeting another player from woods) I've came to cheer up on you!
— (co-op player, struggling on C-tier truck on soft as mash road) - you and your f'ng car...

So, when I feeling like it, I'm "racing" as in "trying to outrun" on weaker vehicles or under heavier loads.

Make "Kiosk"("white")/"Scavenge"("black") modes for maps switchable like "casual"/"hardcore" modes.
Official maps has few kiosks (log spawn points) across the map. For "classic" mode RNGesus chooses at least one or few (but never more than half of them) sites as "active" individually for each player or collectively. That forces player to adapt for new routes and prevents playing specific map the same way all over again.
"Scavenge" mode enables all kiosk sites, but behave as in usual "scavenge mode" mechanics.
For example "Ridge" map in "white" mode disables all sites except two on each small island and there player is has choice of what he want to deliver. Another session will have two points some where at south etc.
Same goes for, like, "Island" map - the difference that not all sites would be active. It will be either near 2nd garage or northernmost site etc.
"Casual" auto-load areas may or may not be present on map, but "scavenge" will force disabling the area regardless of difficulty mode. Or said area will autoload only specific types of cargo.

Gameplay/vecicles:
"Autonomus" mode for carts. The purpose is to make all carts "accessible" by any incompatible vehicle. Currently loaded with lumber like on long logs cart or complex "medium cart with crane" also counts.
Any owned cart by player may be parked in "autonomus" mode, that allow use it without being attached. How do I see it works: cart works in advanced mode only and only if owner is connected via winch to cart's special port (lets say it has blue color). When owner get connected to cart, it behave as "attached" with visible options like repair or fuel. Any pull or exiting "advanced" will release winch. All carts must be attached to compatible truck to be refilled, since autorefill on garage won't work in "advanced" and due to latter, "refill"/"unload" menu won't show anyway.
"Lumber" carts allow to pack/drop load without needing to be attached to compatible truck.
"Utility" carts can share it's points within usual circle around "active" vehicle.
"Garage" will have to have special option to "unpack" garage points if "main" vehicle and/or cart is within "garage" area.
While this feature won't see much usage on "official" maps, since they are that simple, this highly likely wanted on custom maps, which some has ridiculous amount of mills and dedicated logistics are being too much pain.
Also, this gives options for mappers to drop "mobile" and/or "finite" cache of supplies without spawning dedicated for this purpose truck.
Semis may also count, but i'd like to limit this to carts only.

Game caches only one session, but don't save multiplayer games. If played anywhere else - your "coop" cache is lost. If you decide to join to your friend's cached game with your own lost - you will start at defaults but with saved progress from friend's game.

@unster I did understand you, It's just me, who is rather bad at human language

You see, switching gears is not instant move, it has delay time to switch (like in RL - disconnecting gear with clutch, change gear, connect with clutch). While time window is indeed short it is enough to kill any momentum when torque is not applied. Especially on steep slopes and bogs, where truck meet a considerable drag.

And yeah, at least pre-"ridge" "auto" gear did behave like that, but I observed that on 65115 with heavy load. It just didn't hit too low thresholds for dropping down to 1st gear, but again, pre-"ridge" "auto" was going sequental when losing momentum.

@deadwanderer
I would concur that in the mud, the auto-downshift to 1 is a non-issue, even desirable. But on dry roads, especially paved, it's a pain because you lose all your momentum. The automatic should be intelligent enough to pick the right gear (maybe in the code they should account for the surface type).

I'll cite myself:

But then I noticed that trucks on dirt roads run just slightly faster on their top 5/5 gear (15-20 km/h) than 1+ gear (solid 15 km/h) but less steady and more likely to lose speed when dirt ahead is getting softer.

And I was talking about stock non-mod C-trucks, but likely apply to other trucks. I can't rememer the source, but in ST (and I believe it's still in MR) "1+" gear has some power boost.
Also, I'd like to know how do you manage to fail keeping momentum on "especially paved" roads, that it need to downshift (specify truck, load and places). Yes, it was the case for pre-"ridge" zaz-968m, which didn't had enough power to speed up at 5th gear on asphalt ring at "crossing" (high-RPM 4th gear was actually faster).
Game uses "engine tension" and thresholds mechanic. Lower speed thresholds are often coinside with lower gears speeds and it's most likely you lost/need lots of power to speed up from 10 km/h threshold (10 km/h is top speed for most vehicles for "1" gear)

And again, if you yhink that simple script is to dumb to choose you desired gear, I'd suggest you to get gaming gearbox with up to 9 gears.

And that's lead to another feature:
Game/interface:

If possible for "gamepads" - add buttons for sequentally shift gearup, down and to 1st, neutral. (keyboards have lots of buttons to begin with)

I dunno how much different trucks' performance between casual and HC modes, so I speak from HC experience.
As much I've observed speeds and grips on various surfaces, current "auto" gear (drops straight to 1st gear regardless) is best solution as of current state of game.
At first, me too complained that sequentally switching gears is wasting time and killing momentum and that "it should be better at switching to needed gear when not enough momentum to keep up". But then I noticed that trucks on dirt roads run just slightly faster on their top 5/5 gear (15-20 km/h) than 1+ gear (solid 15 km/h) but less steady and more likely to lose speed when dirt ahead is getting softer. And when 1+ is losing it's power, you switch to same 1st gear, because at 1st gear you'll get wheels spinning no matter what. Currently "auto" is more likely to catch up because it won't waste time and momentum on sequentally switching to most powerful gear, which being the 1st gear anyway. Besides, when wheels start spinning in soft dirt, even at 1 gear with full throttle tires will slip, so you'd want to go much slower than nominally 1st gear.
If you wanna do some advanced control over power and grip - I'd suggest you to acquire appropriate gaming gear with dedicated gearbox.

wheels poking through mud guards or truck bed, especially on the B-66 & K-700. On the B-66 it's almost constant & hard to watch in an otherwise real nice looking game

About B66 - it's carriage is for B130. IRL, Gaz-66 has own truck bed with wheel arcs.

@grubdumpling I think that's for "diversity" purpose - to prevent having "same trucks" on grid, but since C260 is more "modern" among C2XX series it has access to medium log cart. Yet, it's still up in the air that it's deliberate or not about latter's inability to attach carts to "short" loader.

Back to features.
Game/vehicles:

C65115 while being "hidden" and complete underdog at bog crawling before "ridge" update was still useful truck as it had short logs crane, it was used as dedicated "crane loader" at cramped places (K700 required lots of space to maneuver with cargo carrier) or "just truck to leave there".
After update said crane was removed and it's role as "last resort truck" is limited to utility and log carrier for paved roads, which aren't good reasons to touch it at all - as carrier it won't pick it's higher speeds under load and as utility it lacks off-road capabilities.

B-6a would enjoy role as loader either via front loader like 700's or 180 degree rear "crane" loader. (as seen in similar tractor mods).

In general, I'm all about that every vehicle would deliver logs and supports in one way or another, even if it mean fetching 1 point at a time via lightweight carts and small roof carriages. This may spawn another type of challenge - while you can squeze through any woods on that 3151 with packed roof it becomes very top heavy and thus, unstable.
Or these cars would just carry other cargo types.

Lobby details - A bit more than just map name and player count; game mode (HC/casual), force map type (see if it's kiosk/scavenge, low priority), list of mods if any and possibility to see names of absent mods.

Favorite truck/map - appear at the top of grid; "favoriting" by right click etc.

Asking for some detailed truck's stats is pointless since mods quite often get ridiculous stats. That's low priority if implementation possible.

in-game chat got too low.

Game/Vehicles:

D-538 is too weak for pulling any carts

Give some vehicles more utility via addons. For example B66 is capable to do more than being big 2-star "scout jeep".

"Auto" gear, while tweaked to be more powerful, is still sequentally shifts down to 1 if current gear can't pull anymore. May be something like tweaking thresholds or shifting more gears down may help this. Scrath that - didn't noticed that it just straight drop to 1, skipping all that sequence. I'm not using "auto" that often.

some trees and branches refuse to break after applying enough force but with somewhat lacking mass. For example: heavy 4-axles chew the "valley" fallen trees with impunity even at crawl speed while most part of 6x6s are struggling to break and getting stuck but after backing a bit the tree will break.

same goes to little spruces that can sustain 90 degree bent at groung but not break and that tension is strong enough to capsize truck when released. Sometimes they are refuse to break no matter what.

Misc/

ability to drop in launched game/ visible and joinable "in-game" lobbies if not set as "friends only". Currently you can do that but either via invite or connecting through friend.